§ 51. Captain John Crowderasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will consider extending the arrangement' whereby arrears of Income Tax can be set off against postwar credits for 1945–46 so as to include postwar credits for previous years.
§ Mr. DaltonNo, Sir. I am afraid I cannot adopt this suggestion.
§ Captain CrowderWould the Chancellor consider hard cases, especially that of a constituent of mine who thought he was receiving allowances and is now being charged Income Tax on what he understood was free of tax money?
§ Mr. DaltonThe difficulty is that we adopted this plan, as I explained last year, as a quite exceptional measure not on its merits, but in order to ease the heavy pressure of work in the tax office, and merely to save labour, and it would not be desirable to extend it because that would give preferential repayment of postwar credits to persons who are in arrears with their Income Tax, which, I would not wish to do.